On 1 January 2007 the Historic Gardens & Landscapes of England project began, with the help of significant and generous additional funding from the Leverhulme Trust; the Leverhulme had already grant aided the last three books - Cornwall, Worcestershire, Oxfordshire - in the series. This nationwide survey will research ten further counties between 2006 and 2012 in order to produce ten more books to add to the six already published. Based at the University of Bristol, this project will be led by Professor Timothy Mowl, Director of the Institute of Garden and Landscape History.

The Times Higher Education Supplement highlighted the Historic Gardens & Landscapes of England Project on 5 January 2007:

"A Bristol Academic has won £314,411 to undertake what must be one of the most pleasant research endeavours in any academic field. Having visited more than 540 historic gardens in Gloucestershire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Cornwall and Worcestershire, Timothy Mowl has now been funded by the Leverhulme Trust to document the historically significant gardens in England. He first recognised the need for a Pevsner-style analysis of England’s historic gardens and landscapes seven years ago while writing a course book for the university’s Garden History MA students. But although the Pevsner architectural guides, which were begun in the 1950s by the great architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, were famous for their detail, they simply listed architectural facts and forsook personal stories and chronology.

'Pevsner was very much my bible as an architectural historian,' Dr Mowl said, 'but the garden books are rather different. They are not dry gazetteers – they contain a great deal of information on the owners and designers of the gardens'. This phase of the project, which aims to survey more than 900 historic gardens, county by county, will build on the volumes already completed by Dr Mowl and will allow him to research and write ten more books, bringing the total in the series up to 16 over the next five years. 'We include modern gardens as well, as these will be the historic gardens of the future', Dr Mowl said. He said that the grant will give young scholars the chance to work as consultants to the project and to serve as joint authors of the books.The project will be conducted under the aegis of the university’s recently established Institute for Garden and Landscape History."

Claire Sanders, Who got that cash? 5 January 2007

Photo: The Triangular Lodge built in the garden of Rushon Hall, Northamptonshire by Sir Thomas Tresham in 1593-7